Whole Wheat Honey Bread

So we are up at the cottage and we have run out of bread but this was sort of my plan :)  I want to make some bread.  I don't get to make it often since it is so good fresh that I over dose on it and since it doesn't last as long as store bought, full of preservative bread, I don't thing we can actually go through a loaf of bread fast enough before it goes stale.  This recipe makes 2 loaves of delicious bread but since we are only 2 adult and 2 kids until Friday, I decided to only bake one of the 2 loaves and leave the other in the freezer until we need it on the weekend and then I will thaw it out and bake it up, Yum.


Whole Wheat Honey Bread
1 lb whole wheat flour
12 fl oz hot water
8 oz all purpose flour
1 - 5oz can of evaporated milk (or milk, soy or water)
1/3 cup honey
2 tsp salt
3 tsp instant yeast
addition 1/2-1 cup flour for desired consistency

*mix whole wheat flour and hot water, cover and set aside for at least 1 hour or until it comes back to room temperature
*add milk, honey, salt, yeast and bread flour.  Knead by hand or by machine until a tacky but not completely sticky dough is formed.  Place dough in a greased bowl, cover with plastic and set aside 60-90 minutes.
NB.  I put it in a cold oven with the light on.
*Divide dough in 2 and shape into logs.  Place in grease bread pans, cover loosely with plastic or in a plastic bag and set aside for 90 minutes.
*Place loaves in a cold oven with a pan of freshly boiled water.  Turn oven to 375* and leave it in for 30 minutes.  After the 30minutes remove the pan with the water and bake an addition 15 minutes or until the internal temp is 185* and when tapped on the bottom it has a hollow sound.  Cool on a wire rack.

So I cracked out my awesome scale again.  This recipe calls for the flour to be weighed which is alright by me since I love to use this fine instrument :)

This recipe is somewhat unusual since it wants the whole wheat flour to be bloomed first in the water.  I think that hot water rather then boiling water will work better but I will have to try it out again since I used freshly boiled water in this batch.  This is then covered and let come back to room temperature.

Once it has come back to room temp it is time to add all the lovely other things to the mix.  Now I didn't have instant yeast this time so I bloomed the yeast first and then added it to the mix (or I would have if I hadn't forgotten the yeast and the salt while mixing it up the first time. Luckily adding the yeast, salt, and some extra flour since it was in liquid seems to have worked fine this time.) The whole wheat flour and the water mixture makes it more interesting to add the other ingredients, I usually start by adding the wet ingredients and then adding in the dry.  This is after it had risen for way too long, it was in the oven rising for 3ish hours.

 So this the second rise of the bread.  I have formed it into a loaf  and put the other one in the freezer.  Here I have it covered in plastic wrap and let it rise in a cold oven with the light on.

It is hard to see but there is a pan of water under that loaf pan.  It is there to add moister to aid in the rise and giving it a lovely crumb.

So here is the final result.  It is tasty although it didn't rise as much since I let it rise too much on the first rise.  Still it has a nice texture and isn't too hard on the out side (which is always a challenge with home baked breads.  I did add a little bit of butter along the top where I scored the top, that probably helped too.